Fine!?!? Fine then... but you didn't find an easy fine.

At around 8ish this morning I had a run in with an 'undercover enforcer' for Newham Council,who attempted to fine me

£50 for littering.

I must state at this point that I was not...

fly-tipping,

or throwing a half eaten panini at a Community Support Officer.

He caught me dropping a cigarette on the floor...

In my defense there's no 'fag-bin' on the wall, so I'd never really thought of an alternative.

Anyways,

the way the whole situation transpired was really quite surreal

(maybe because I had pretty much just woke up),

 he stopped me and pulled out his Council Badge 

which just happened to be official looking to an unnecessary extent, adorned with some coat of arms and i'm sure meant to intimidate as soon as revealed.

He explained that he was fining me for dropping my butt on the floor and emplored me to give him my details. I was in the process of creating false information to give him, when all of a sudden I felt this immense disdain towards the idea of having to invent some pseudo-persona and accompanying information to give this man.

I told him "... Actually, no..."

and he was a little taken aback, I think partly by my defiance and the contagiousness of my morning-stupidity but I had to ask him "Sorry... you're going to have to walk me through this again"

and he was like "I'm fining you because I just watched you walk up and throw down your cigarette butt"

so my response was "Why didn't you stop me!?!"

to which he said "Why didn't you put it in the bin!?!"

I was like "A lit fag in the bin? C'mon there's not even a cigarette bin here what do you expect?"

to which his implausible response was that firstly we're responsible for the localtion of cigarette bins and furthermore, that I should've dotted the butt out and "Put it in my cigarette box"

by this time I think communications had broke down because he reverted to asking for me details.

He certainly wasn't happy when I told him "You'll just have to phone the police",

 but the fact is his attempt to scare me by mentioning the magistrate didn't work, So we were at the kind of stalemate that can only be resolved with police intervention.

Still, It brought real Christmas cheer to my heart getting to tell him "No, and it's ok... I have a blog!"

the last time he asked "what's your date of birth" 

adding that I could "Complain after providing my details".

Eventually he let me go, as not only would it've been time consuming to detain me, but also'people like myself' clearly weren't the intended target of the 'mornings operation'.

These two council officials were there to try draw money out of the people on the way to work. Which is quite sad seeing as they'd've been better placed gritting the dangerous pavements so these same people could get to work and generate income for the local area.

I know the countries broke, but the local authorities could at least have some class to their money making exercises.

For me,

today was a remarkable

and frankly I'm disappointed!

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